Hi, I’m Chris Robinson, senior art director of World of Warcraft, and this is the first in a series of articles we're creating to bring you all closer to the development of the player character model revamps we announced at BlizzCon. In this series, we'll give you an inside look at the process we go through to do one of these revamps, discuss the kinds of art issues we're addressing with the new models, and provide a bit of insight our future plans for their continued polish.

We're happy to begin our series by sharing a first look at where we're at with the Human female. While future articles won’t always be about revealing a new model, we thought this would be a great introduction to the approach we take for every one of these redesigns.

We’re looking at these model revamps as a sort of “spiritual update” to the art content that currently exists in-game—except we’re completely redoing them from scratch. That includes the base model, skin tone variations, customization options (e.g. wrinkles, scars, moles, earrings, etc.), hairstyles, and any skin variations for NPCs you see out in the world, like Iron Dwarves or Leper Gnomes. We’re pretty excited about some of the ideas you've given us for new customization and skin options you’d like to see, but our first goal—which is already a monumental endeavor—is to make sure that the visual content that currently exists is brought up to or surpasses the level of quality you see in current boss models, the Pandaren, and central NPCs like the new Vol’jin model.

With the revamp, we’re completely overhauling every aspect of the player models, but our goal is to do so while retaining the core look and feel that has always made them your character. We'll feel like we've succeeded if you see the updated version of your character and it still feels like you’re looking at the character you’ve been playing for the past however many years—only someone has finally focused a lens.

To achieve this, we’re increasing the polygon count significantly (in some cases going from less than 1,000 to over 5,000), more than doubling the texture resolution, increasing bone count significantly to support updated animation and facial expression, and retouching nearly every animation for all of the characters. For animation alone, that’s roughly 180 animations per character, times 10 races in both male and female variants, equaling approximately 3,600 animations. We’re also incorporating the rigging technology we introduced with the Pandaren into every character to provide better posing, smoother animation, and the ability to pull off some fantastic facial expressions. In the weeks and months ahead, we’re going to be bringing you in for a closer look at some of the processes, challenges, and results of this revamp process.

What you’re looking at here for the Human female is a single face option and a single skin tone on the base model without any animation or posing. When developing the base model we keep the expression on the face as devoid of emotion or expression as possible, as that allows our animators a greater range of motion when they start posing and morphing the face into different expressions. If we were to put any amount of expression—even a slight smile or mildly angry eyebrows—in the base model, that would carry through to every animation, and we'd end up with some very confused-looking characters.

Joe Keller is a senior character artist on our team and was responsible for the lion’s share of modeling and texturing the Human female. Here's what he had this to say about this challenge:

“Everyone is pretty familiar with the Human character models in WoW, but working on these updates gives us a chance to embellish and fill in the blanks. For the Human female this meant we could give her more muscle definition and personality in the face while still staying true to the overall look and spirit of the original. Hopefully this will also help show her as more of the capable fighter that she is.”

This process has been a welcome challenge for all of us on the World of Warcraft art team. We’ve all wanted to address the player models and bring them up to a more current fidelity for some time now, and we’re as excited as you are to get these models into the game. We hope you’ll enjoy this series as we invite you to meet the team and see more on our development process.

These models are fine! Only reason people are disliking it is because, you are forgetting that it will look more natural when in motion. Blizzard should release some examples at WoD official advertisement site.

Me either, looks like a chubby soccer mom that has been curling 30lb dumbbells everyday.

She doesn't look chubby at all she looks fit...You got to remember the model covers classes from mage (tends to be clad in robes wont really see legs) To warriors (clad in heavy ass plate yet runs as fast as the rest). You would expect the one in plate to look like a figure skater, gymnast, beach volley ball, soccer player, etc! They will be fit and have large quads due to lifting / running with so much weight, there arms will be big too .. The shield and sword my prot was has is heavy... Titan grip female toons would have huge guns as well!.

Because they're using an old game engine that's been band-aided with features possibly since Warcraft 3 itself. This is why models in other games can be made so much faster, tools have been made specifically for them to work that way.

Still bashing WoW I see, do you even play it and if not then why do you care what happens with WoW or are you just trying to start a flame war..

But then again as the old saying goes haters are gonna hate..

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Originally Posted by Robert3620

After all this time, this is the best they can do? What a total joke. These models are nothing special at all.

Lets to see you do any better, when you can do better then folks might take you seriously.. The thing is that when you are designing the models for a game like this you try to make the models look as good as possible without dragging down peoples computers..

Considering that the original models used 1000 polys and they have made them look as good as they have with 5000 polys then that is very well done..

She's supposed to be a fighter, of course she's going to be muscular. And honestly if you think that is chubby you've got a problem. Not to mention she's practically the exact same shape she's always been.

Personally I think it's pretty damn good, though I'd say it's my least favourite so far. The eyes did weird me out but as that's the neutral expression I'm not worried. My only real complaint (on behalf of anyone who plays humans) is that the face does look significantly different to it's corresponding old face. I think they definitely need to give free re-customisations.

Still bashing WoW I see, do you even play it and if not then why do you care what happens with WoW or are you just trying to start a flame war..

But then again as the old saying goes haters are gonna hate..

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Lets to see you do any better, when you can do better then folks might take you seriously.. The thing is that when you are designing the models for a game like this you try to make the models look as good as possible without dragging down peoples computers..

Considering that the original models used 1000 polys and they have made them look as good as they have with 5000 polys then that is very well done..

Still 'bashing' wow? Broad sweeping statement indicating you haven't read my previous posts in this thread. The discussion is about how it could've been better instead of bandaids. You're welcome to go read them. Where I say this is a good improvement over what we have right now but still ages behind the times. Many have said it, we upgraded from 2003 gfx to 2007. While this would be incredible for someone who only played wow all this time, for others that have seen more years ago it's hardly substantial.
Ex: Cataclysm introduced water shaders that existed in Guild Wars 1 (not even going to mention Farcry 1 cause people will say it's a different genre)

The argument of 'Lets see you do better' is really stale, we DO see other studios do better, and I insist, graphically with less means.

Oh and PS, I do play wow. In fact I play on US and EU with a total of 13 90's. Why? Cause Blizz never allowed region xfers and THAT is something that always pissed me off

I'm still waiting to see if another blog post is going up at 6pm (UK time) like the Artcraft one did yesterday. I'm only wondering because Chris mentioned a Thu/Fri reveal on Twitter and obviously that probably just meant that the date for the reveal wasn't fully decided at the time of his tweet but I can hope. If we don't get anything new today I feel like we won't get any for another week or so. :'(

Also just want to add that I hope they add at least a few builds for the new models. A warrior would be much more muscular than a mage, for instance. A warrior's muscles would be bulky compared to a lean muscular physique of a hunter. This is probably just a pipe dream but would be a nice addition.